# Creators 🎨

## View from our telescope 🔭

There’s been an explosion in the community creator economy in the past few years. From independent creators teaching others what they know, the rise of cohort courses, or even your friendly YouTuber or Twitch Streamer, all of these folks fall under what we classify as part of the community creator economy. These folks have proved that they aren't going anywhere, with some reports claiming a possible market of these individuals scaling of up 400M individuals by 2024 all building a new way of working. Let's explore how these creators build community and leverage the Orbit Model in order to achieve success.

## Challenges they face

Those who lead, build and foster creator communities are faced with two primary categories in order to be successful:
regularly maintaining and delivering content, resources, tools, and/or services to a specific niche
fostering a community of folks that consume, cocreate, and continue to curate these assets.

While these independently could be enough to constitute a full-time job, many times folks are doing these as a solo act. When working in the community creator economy as a solo act or even as a small team or bootstrapped organization — it's important to work efficiently and mindfully in the future.

Aside from these two hurdles in terms of deliverables and time constraints, these groups additionally face struggles in terms of monetization and sustainable revenue. Creators are often nickel and dimed across various platforms all taking a cut or percentage, and these little fees add up to be a larger cut out of their takehome pay.

## The Orbit Model in Action

By using the Orbit Model, creators can tap into a better understanding of their community and maximize their efforts in what they do. From identifying and highlighting potential champions or ambassadors to figuring out who is open and interested in different topics in their circles – the Orbit Model provides further understanding of what moves to make next.

## Gravity

What pulls members towards these creator communities is often initially centered around the creator themselves. The early stages of creator communities can start as simply as a Twitter feed, a regular newsletter, or even a Twitch stream. Individuals and possible one-day community members tend to be drawn in by content, the connection they have with the individual, or those who share the message that is created.

This sort of minimum-viable-community (MVC) approach starts to gain it's legs when we notice an uptick in gravity among the members. Tracking new subscribers, increased number of followers or commenters or even your first paid subscription are all ways of demonstrating that the gravity of the community is growing. This signal becomes key in demonstrating the possible success a community might have, what efforts are worth doubling down on, and what efforts well... aren't.

As members gain more and more loyalty and gravity, they'll increase in the number of activities and the depth of activities that they take on within the community. They might upgrade from simply being a Twitter follower to a newsletter subscriber, or a newsletter subscriber to an event attendee, to even one day possibly guest hosting an event or workshop. All of this can be tracked through activities, longevity in the community, and the interactions they have with their fellow community members.

## Love

With an increase in gravity, additionally comes an increase in love. For a creator community — this often is seen or portrayed when the casual subscriber moves into a fan or stan as some communities would call them. As they get more active within the community, their presence and participation will increase. If you're a creator — keep your eyes out for new friendly faces, those who are repeatedly sharing or reposting your content or even referring your content to new members.

Consistency is often referred to as a key to success — even more so for online creators. Love will help reinforce the habits you have as a creator and guide you to visually see the impact that consistency has on those around you.

As creators develop and grow their communities, roles will naturally emerge among the members either naturally or by assigned role status. By leaning into core members and early fans — creators can assign roles to delegate tasks, foster further support and grow their own business and initiatives along with the community as a whole.

### Common roles that we can see in the creator space are as follows:

- _creator:_ someone who is creating the content + tends to host or dictate norms within the space
  advocate/ambassador: someone who supports the creator in content creation, operations, or community maintenance. This allows the creator to grow larger than themselves and scale initiatives and opportunities beyond the individual
- _moderator:_ many times, especially in the world of gaming and streaming, we'll see a moderator role that ensures the community remains safe and effective in the community as a whole. These individuals may lookout for specific content issues, struggles, or problems within the community as a whole.
- _supporter/patron/paid subscriber:_ these folks tend to make up the financial backers, and are more subscribed to the community as a whole, contributing financially towards their endeavors.

## Reach

Arguably — reach is one of those metrics that may be most important or impactful for a creator community. Oftentimes, because these communities are bootstrapped or driven by a small team or even just one creator, we rely on a thorough understanding of their networks or reach to continue to grow. Using the Orbit Model, creators can gain a better understanding of their own reach.

Who drives the relationships and the content requests within your community? Using and understanding the clout within your community can help drive how other members interact, what interests your community might have, and overall attitudes and entertainment within your community.

For better or worse, creator communities are particularly sensitive to individuals with high reach in a specific industry or category.

## Impact

Creator communities can directly see the impact among their members through building not only a sustainable revenue stream, but also deeper connections with their members. Repeated memberships, loyalty, and referrals within the community are all signs that the creator has successfully created value for those who subscribe.

We start to see a flywheel develop, usually around a relationship of publishing relevant content and fostering conversations around it.

### A common flywheel in a creator community is as follows:

- The creator creates content piece
- Content is shared among the community
- Community members share content publicly or to a friend
- New individuals want to see what’s interesting and subscribe or join the community
- The community has now grown
- _Rinse, wash, repeat_
